Teaching Chinese: Caitlin Flohr ’19, East Asian languages and culture, with Ronan Allison, 5th grade (left), and Malloch Allison, 3rd grade (right)
“You see yourself from a different perspective by teaching language. Through the class and writing an autobiography on the journey of learning the language you also start to know yourself better.”
THE MONOLINGUAL FRAME OF MIND Caitlin Flohr ’19 doesn’t speak fluent Chinese. It might seem counterintuitive, then, that the East Asian languages and culture major stands in a classroom, before a group of kids, directing a Chinese lesson. Not so, says Ivanov. While not fluent, “anyone teaching at the RMMS has linguistic skills sufficient to transmit introductory foreign language knowledge to novices. I should also note that at the RMMS, learning is mutual, since our students learn better the target language by teaching it,” Ivanov says. Like Flohr, some of the other Conn students lack fluency in the target languages they teach. A lack of fluency, though, is not a hindrance because the RMMS kids are learning just a handful of words (“introductory foreign language knowledge”): colors, days of the week, personal 32
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details about pets, siblings or favorite activities. Acquiring about a half-dozen words in a target language over six weeks of classes. What’s the value? “Kids come out of the program saying they can speak Chinese even if they only know a few words,” says Hugh Birdsall, the certified ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) teacher for RMMS grades 2-5. ESOL is designed to support English-language learners in their acquisition of English and in their educational development. “This program builds their self-esteem. And self-esteem is everything.” It’s also important to note that the goal of the world languages program is not teaching fluency to these primaryschool kids. It’s an exposure program, one that helps develop cultural sensitivity, to help kids start down the road toward becoming global citizens. “Even the most elementary exposure to foreign languages makes diversity visible (and audible) to the kids and stimulates their linguistic curiosity that later on can— and very often does—become a passion for languages,” Ivanov says.
WINTER 2016
2/12/16 4:02 PM